By Brandon Smith
People who have been reading my analysis for a long time are well aware of my expectations on the eventual outcome of the US economic debacle: A stagflationary crisis followed by a massive crash similar to the Great Depression (or worse). I based this prediction on a number of circumstances, but primarily I went back to the history of currency devaluations and central bank policy. These kinds of things have happened before and they tend to follow a pattern that is visible today.
Specifically, I studies the 1971-1981 stagflation crisis for reference and I found some startling similarities. It was one of the worst economic declines in American history next to the depression, and it’s an event that almost no one talks about. A lot of people (specifically Gen Z) believe that our current era is the worst financial era of all time and that their generation has been shafted by previous generations.
This is inaccurate; the stagflation disaster of the 1970s was far worse. That said, it shows us where our country is eventually headed and it’s not looking good. What is a manageable economic crunch today has the potential to become a calamity tomorrow.
One issue that I’m fascinated by that usually isn’t mentioned in mainstream economic discussion is quality degradation – The way in which products, services, construction, manufacturing, style and availability tend to break down when inflation suddenly spikes. This process is known as “skimpflation” and it was rampant in the 1970s and early 1980s. Most Americans today think of the 70s as a happy-go-lucky era of disco, bell bottoms and psychedelics, but in reality it was economically dismal.
Examining real life images and footage from the decade compared to the 1950s to 1960s, there was a stark shift in the quality of life. From the quality of cars, to the quality of clothes, to the quality of housing. Some US cities (like New York or Philadelphia) looked like warzones complete with rubble strewn slums. After sky-high inflation for several years causes a doubling and tripling of retail prices along with growing unemployment rates, the environment starts to feel real ugly.
Skimpflation And The Food Pyramid Agenda
Another aspect of life that takes a hit is the quality of diet and the ability of families to feed themselves. Most people are familiar with the concept of “shrinkflation” – The habit of companies to shrink portion sizes while keeping their packaging and prices the same in order to offset inflation in production costs without consumers noticing. However, skimpflation is another way in which companies will attempt to avoid raising prices on the shelf, and that’s by lowering the quality of ingredients, along with encouraging the public to eat less nutritious (and less expensive to produce) foods.
The 1970s was the decade that gave birth to the processed food market and the microwave cuisine, at least on a wider scale. This was the decade when American food truly took a nose dive. The ease of processed foods was offset by the poor nutritional content. They were cheaper, but the quality sucked and we are still living with the repercussions of that trend today.
There were, of course, counter-culture movements working against the adoption of processed foods, including “know your farmer” type organizations and organic movements. But as we are all well aware, the cheap processed foods eventually won. Society embraced the market because they had to. Prices were so high that it was the only way they could feed their families everyday.
Interestingly, the Food Pyramid that we were all taught about as children in public schools was introduced to the western world in 1972. The pyramid was actually first used by the Swedish government in direct response to inflation and was designed to encourage the populace to eat cheaper food-stuffs (primarily cereals, dairy products, pastas and carbs). Governments have been using subsidies to promote the consumption of low cost and low quality foods ever since.
I’m recounting these trends from the 1970s because we are seeing a very similar agenda today, though it is far more insidious in nature. Economic decline is a favorite tool for the establishment to control the behavior of populations, including dietary habits.
Dollar Losing Buying Power? Switch To Lab Grown Meat And Bugs…
It’s no coincidence, for example, that there has been a massive push by government agencies and corporations to acclimate the public to the idea of fake lab-grown meat products. For now, fake meats are more expensive than real meats so there’s no incentive for the public to consume them, but if inflation continues to drive prices higher eventually real steak will cost far more than artificial steak and people may be convinced that the fake stuff is a viable alternative.
Then there’s the notion of western consumers eating bugs for protein instead of beef or chicken or pork. Beyond the claims that this will somehow “save the climate” from global warming (which is a complete falsehood backed by zero concrete evidence), the powers-that-be also suggest that bugs will be far more affordable than hamburgers in the near future.
Bugs are traditionally a starvation food. They are only a staple in countries where famine is common or where governments aggressively restrict normal agriculture. Bug protein also has a habit of giving people parasites. The only way westerners could be convinced to eat bugs as a part of their regular diet is if inflation crushes the regular meat market.
Let The Peasants Eat Cereal…
Another form of skimpflation is the shift even further to the bottom of the food pyramid. Recently, Kellogg’s CEO Gary Pilnick suggested in an interview with CNBC that Americans will eventually start ‘eating cereal for dinner’ because the cost is so much cheaper per portion. In other words, cheap processed carbs will become a mainstay of the American diet because a lot of people won’t be able to afford anything else. Pilnick brags that Kellogg’s is well placed for this coming change in the food market…
The marketing for this idea is already well underway. Various companies are promoting an end to traditional healthy homemade dinner habits and a switch to unconventional and cheaper processed foods. The thrust of the Kellogg’s campaign relies on poverty. Meaning, they are banking on the expectation that Americans will be poorer in the near term and that this condition will continue for years to come.
Just as we saw during the 1970s stagflation crisis, there is a rush to cut quality in all goods and services, but food is a major target. Today, it’s about convincing the market to consume more carbs and processed foods and less protein. Tomorrow, it will be about abandoning established agriculture altogether and having all our food manufactured in labs. The elites seem to be planning for a significant financial crisis beyond what we have already dealt with and this is evident in their efforts to sell the reconstruction of our dietary habits based on poverty rather than prosperity.
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I remember the 70’s.
I remember when American made cars got a bad reputation, which made way for the Japanese market. I also remember being brainwashed into thinking that carbs were the healthy and preferred food source. I remember a period of time as a kid when my family ate a lot of oatmeal for dinner. This was due to a period of financial hardship.
We had pancakes for dinner.
You always hit the nail on the head. My solution is to cut back on everything the system provides, and expand my production of everything it doesn’t. If I can’t get it from without the system, I will learn to work around or do without. And I will do this on my terms. I have increased my flock size to provide eggs for barter. I have some silver, but that feeds nobody, and is worthless if there is nothing to buy.
I am also about to sign off the internet for good. I liked the bait, but refuse the switch.
Our local “Wally World” is now up to one eighth of the frozen processed food being “fake food” and it looks like they are making room to bring it to one fourth.
Also, pound per pound, calorie per calorie cereal is more expensive than beef steaks. Also requires more packaging and shipping space.
HUMANS! EAT BUGS!
So your Foreign Nazi Rulers can eat Sirloin Steak and Roast Duck!
C’mon now. Maybe oatmeal, granola already outta sight.
They’re already attempting to destroy the agricultural industry in parts of Europe, livestock in particular, as a means to fight ‘climate change’. And some are speculating, like my parents, that the fires that recently ravaged the Texas panhandle may have been deliberately caused to destroy a part of our cattle industry.
I agree.
Greg Reese did Reese Report on Rumble proving this.
Cheaper is an egg, sausage, and toast. Less than a dollar.
And much better for you. Heck, add jam/jelly for a few cents.
… “quality degradation – The way in which products, services, construction, manufacturing, style and availability tend to break down when inflation suddenly spikes.”
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Quality degradation actually began once American industries were shutting down and being moved offshore in the 1960s. What once had been a ‘quality’ hallmark of much of American industry and products was now in the hands of Globalists seeking cheap labor with lesser skills and vulture corporations more interested in making money and degrading their products than in providing dependable goods.
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Products of every kind and nature that used to be made in towns big and small around America were now being made in places no one would want to ever visit by workers who were no match for the skills and dedication of American workers in the post-War era leading up to the ugly 1970s. The ‘Greatest Generation’ was still very much alive and providing the heartbeat of America and the great American labor force.
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The huge steel mills of Hammond and Gary, Indiana… and around Pennsylvania… the massive textile industry in the American Southeast… High-quality men’s and women’s shoes being made in Chicago and St. Louis… high quality women’s stockings and men’s T-shirts being made in Las Cruces, New Mexico… big Copper mines in Southern Arizona… every town of any size had a factory zone that provided steady jobs and incomes to hard-working Americans (as Americans were in those days)… more farms owned by American farm families and not corporate operations led by vulture Globalists seeking to starve Americans into submission.
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“Most Americans today think of the 70s as a happy-go-lucky era of disco, bell bottoms and psychedelics, but in reality it was economically dismal.”
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Actually, disco (and the disco-ball-white-suit-dance-lifestyle) was a ‘happy’-seeking reflexive response by hurting Americans to the years of hurting and dullness and ugliness that had consumed America after the death of JFK in 1963… and the hideous Vietnam War and the race riots and the toxic National politics that showed up in Chicago in the police riot of 1968 during the Democrat Convention (as it was characterized by a commission that studied the 1968 mayhem in Chicago). A fuming and angry and defiant Mayor Daley who instructed the police to start cracking skulls in ‘his City’… and a few disruptors and agitatord who got all the publicity instead of countless thousands of earnest protesting young Americans who hated what was happening to our Country.
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“Another aspect of life that takes a hit is the quality of diet and the ability of families to feed themselves.”
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What better way is there to kill off we ‘Useless Eaters’?
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We are hated by the Ruling Class. Truly hated. They don’t like us. They don’t need us. They don’t want us around.
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Well, guess what, ‘Leadership Class’? The feeling is mutual. We don’t like you or need you, either. You ‘leaders’ created this mess. You own it.
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And if you Globalists like bugs so much… YOU eat ‘em. Lots and lots of them. Just leave the rest of us out of it. And leave all the cattle and chickens and turkeys and pigs for us.
Outsourcing labor did not really strike US manufacturing until the 70s, but I’m sure there were a few instances in the 60s. Comparing the 60s to the 70s in the US is horrifying – The country went dystopian in the span of a decade. So many people today are unaware of how bad it was.
And honestly has it ever recovered? We’ve been on the dystopian slippery slope now since then. If not for TV, computers, smart phones and tablets (the modern circus, we don’t get the bread so much anymore) keeping the majority in an hypnotic zombified state, there probably would’ve been a serious peasant uprising already.
“Comparing the 60s to the 70s in the US is horrifying – The country went dystopian in the span of a decade. So many people today are unaware of how bad it was.”
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Comparing the ‘50s to the ‘70s is even worse. The Fifties saw all the post-war prosperity in full bloom and Americans were building new homes and buying new American-made appliances and eating American-grown food and feeling good about themselves. Kids in school were learning real subjects. Churches still preached the Gospel. Doctors still believed in Doing No Harm. Media was not concentrated in just a tiny few filthy hands as it is today. And no effing (not so)-‘Patriot’ Act. And no Not-So-Smart-Phones.
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Sure, there was the Red Scare to keep everyone afraid and in line – and some nasty racial attitudes – but overall it was Heaven compared to what the ugly ‘70s were and certainly the even worse Woke times of today.
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People of the 1950s and early ‘60s did not have a clue how good they had it.
Having lived through the change (most of it), I’m aware of how bad it was.
The 1960s gave us “Gilligan’s Island” and “Batman” and the 1970s gave us “Welcome Back Kotter” and “Dallas.” The disintegration of American society in the 1970s is nothing short of appalling. I kid … mostly.
I was young, but cognizant when Nixon took us completely off the gold standard. I remember my father being furious about it, and insisting that “Tricky Dick” had betrayed us all. The economy just got worse and worse after that.
“Bug protein also has a habit of giving people parasites. The only way westerners could be convinced to eat bugs as a part of their regular diet is if inflation crushes the regular meat market.”
I don’t think this can be understated, I was recently watching a Lee Merritt interview on Stew Peters talking about disease being a manifestation of parasitical infection. Whatever the powers that be are pushing, assume it’s not for your benefit and run in the opposite direction. When they say meat=bad the truth is meat=good.
The Elite and Globalists are playing with fire and if they haven’t noticed, history tends to repeat or at least rhyme. Messing with the ability for people to eat and properly feed their families is a nice catalyst for civil unrest. Trust in government and the media are at an all time low. People are beginning to wake up. It’s NOT going to end well in the end for TPTB. History has always shown the Plebs always win.
I remember when they started labeling small candy bars “snack size,” and now it’s common to see candy labeled as “snacks.” These food companies that produce these health-destroying foods (includes cereal too, sodas, chips, and a lot of other crap) are mass murderers.
I refer to cereal these days as “breakfast candy”.
Hey Brandon, it’s great to see you bringing awareness to this subject of their reducing the quality of our foods and the food pyramid you put up is pretty much spot on…all poisons.
My 30-something “kids” lament over how bad things are now. I tell ’em to cry me a river, and then go do some searching on what was going on in the 70’s. They HONESTLY DON’T BELIEVE ME when I tell them what was going on! “Look it up,” I tell them.
The sad thing is, even if we DID bring manufacturing beck to the U.S, what would we manufacture? Think of HOW MANY THINGS have been rendered OBSOLETE by the cell phone and the PC! If you want to rattle your brain cells awake, go to an estate sale and look at all the “JUNK” that’s for sale! Landline phones, calculators, film cameras, cassette recorders, DVD and VHS tape players, typewriters, “old” books,… This was ALL USEFUL STUFF when it was bought! We paid good money for it. Now it’s truly worthless, save for use as props in a show set in the 70’s or 80’s.
I remember a time when computers were going to “give us more time to enjoy life.” OK… We have the time… What do we do… without money to spend?…
The food pyramid makes pyramid-shaped people.
I have backyard hens for lots of eggs and I have a great cattle farmer nearby from whom I buy all my grass-fed beef. It’s expensive, but it’s hearty and healthy. My diet is primarily protein with complex carbs on the side and lots of veggies. You can eat fairly inexpensively if you’re willing to cook every day. I can get a flat of chicken thighs for $10 and that’s about ten thighs.
Eating horribly is easy and cheap. Eating a healthy diet is a bit more expensive and labor-intensive, but it’s well worth it.
So totally agree. I think the issue that most Americans have with eating healthy is that you pretty much have to cook it yourself, which most don’t want to bother with. Go to the most expensive restaurants and even there you’ll find that they’re not cooking in say, animal fats or coconut oil, or at the very least olive oil. No, they’re cooking in the bad seed oils like: soybean, sunflower and canola oil. This will only get fixed once the public learns these are bad oils and start boycotting restaurants cooking with these oils.
Great point, Gauntlet.
I started saving animal fat when I started making stocks. Now I routinely cook in chicken fat, which is not only delicious, but totally healthy. I had no idea seed oils were so bad until a couple years ago.
I should mention that I recently heard (I can’t remember where) that we used to use these seed oils as lubricant in our car’s engines. Now we eat them.
Also, the gripe is that coconut oil is supposedly too “nutty” for most people’s taste. I cook my beef steaks in coconut oil and love the taste, and it’s less than half the price of olive oil. Moreover, coconut oil is 100% saturated fat, great for cooking at high temps, whereas even olive oil is a mixture of polyunsaturated and mono-unsaturated fats, so it breaks down at high temps, which may be carcinogenic. So save money and eat healthier by cooking in animal fats, palm oil, or coconut oil and leave the seed oils for the elitists.
Is that why many hindus today, shun eating beef? And catholics, red meat on lent Fridays?
Acclimating the folk, to a more vegetarian lifestyle, by means of religion.
That’s a bit different in terms of goals, but a similar premise of getting people to do without. In religion, the purpose is about spiritual discipline, not economic control.
Can we trust them goals, when the state meddles? e.g. Emperor Constantine nodded at the destruction of pagan temples.
How about cognitive control? A tame lot, is less likely to roll back tyranny. I wonder if there’s a link between a meat-rich diet and mental development, aside from height and strength. Our cowboy (PIE) forefathers were jacked.
As a kid I was insulated from much of the shock of the 1970s because my father got a much better job in 1970. The 1960s was oatmeal, fish sticks, chicken pot pie, and dinners over at friends and relatives which my parents were happy to see. Then it became steak for dinner, vacations, color TV, and a bicycle in the 1970s. I did eat cereal for dinner occasionally as a teen, since I was a jock and ate like a horse. But the 1970s was also the time that American production of conventional oil peaked, chaos in the Middle East created “oil shocks”, the reckless spending from the Vietnam war impacted the economy, and the only President we’ve ever had who had a clue about a sound energy policy (Jimmy Carter) was voted out after his term.
From a food and nutrition perspective, I believe things are much worse now. Costs were held down for food (which has the largest lobbyist organization in DC) for decades, but now trying to eat relatively healthy has exploded in cost. The Kellogg’s CEO crowing about “well positioned” for the downward trend of the economy is sad. Sick, really. What a putz. Consider the state of our “sick care” industry and the lingering effect of the Jabs, and I believe it’s a safe bet by the end of this decade we’d love to have conditions be only as bad as the ’70s….bugs, it could easily be what’s for dinner, whether we like it or not….
When I saw your food pyramid it reminded me of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Much of the US today has lost any concept of the bottom level, that of Physiological Needs (those required for human survival: food, water, shelter, etc.). With those usually being met today by one gov’t program or another, the bottom layer has ceased to exist. You can’t fall to that level because it is not there.
But of course that’s false. I simply cannot imagine the panic that will set in when that layer reappears. Babylon is going to fall, “. . . and great shall be the fall of it.”
I saw this on TELEGRAM:
“The prohibition on carrying weapons by ILLEGAL NON-VIOLENT immigrants is declared unconstitutional.
The Second Amendment protects people’s ability to own a gun even if they have entered the country illegally. (https://thereload.com/gun-ban-for-non-violent-illegal-immigrant-found-unconstitutional/)
That’s the ruling handed down Friday by U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman. She found that the federal ban on illegal immigrants owning guns is unconstitutional, at least as it applies to Heriberto Carbajal-Flores. She ruled that the ban did not fit with America’s historic tradition of gun regulation as required by the Supreme Court’s landmark New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen ruling.
HOW WILL THEY BE ABLE TO KNOW THAT THEY ARE NOT VIOLENT IF THEY JUST ENTERED ILLEGALLY?🤔”
We live in a world where furniture polish bottles are labeled with 100% real lemon ingredients… While grocery stores stock lemon powder drink mix for us with lemon-flavored chemicals. Bizarro upside down world for a long time now. And we wonder why there are health problems running rampant. Kind of shows you how important we are to our leaders.